All the Stars in the Sky
by Samurai101
Summary: Do you remember what it was like, to pull stars from the sky? Do you remember how they burned our hands?


_Do you remember what it was like, to pull stars from the sky?_

If Izuna were alive, he would have taken Shisui, Madara would have taken Itachi, and the Uchiha name would have been one to fear once again.

Madara has long become disenchanted with his clan and their weaknesses, but these two little ones, ten and thirteen, playing in the shallows of the Nakano, excite him. They use chakra indiscriminately, climbing on the water, the bank, the trees with ease, and Shisui flickers around, leaving sun bright bursts as he throws water into the air. They roll like puppies onto the beach, deadly blows pulled in jesting, quick numbing strikes blunted by blocks and chakra blasts.

This natural puppy play is deadly, but the children hold no malicious intent toward each other. The opposite, in fact, but Madara sees seventeen times Itachi almost dies. Twenty for Shisui because Itachi lacks control at this age, or maybe Shisui fears hurting his cousin and holds back. These children, growing to killers, turn their murderous intent into _affection_ and they can because it is such a part of them, they own it. They are it. They will be terrors unknown in this world of watered down ninja.

If Izuna were still alive, he would have smiled and pointed to the awkward one with elbows and knees and curly hair and said 'he's mine.' Madara would have taken the neat, cat like one with the sleek dark ponytail and large eyes. Together they would have raised them to be gods. Horrible. Terrible. Amazing.

Itachi tackles Shisui into the shallows, smiling as they splash down. Shisui shoves him free, onto the bank where they lay, panting for breath with smiles. Itachi looks at Shisui, and all the world is in his eyes.

Madara leaves them tangled on the bank, growing bodies and limbs intersecting like lifelines on the palm, as the little one falls asleep with his face against Shisui's neck. Such intimacy no longer interests Madara.

"I see you."

Shisui's red eyes track Madara's shifts in the trees. Blood red, bright and real. Anxious and excited as an arm curls protectively around Itachi and Shisui begins to sit up a little. Itachi stirs, placid grey eyes flickered open and shut as he looks up at his cousin's face in question.

"I see you in the trees, old man."

Madara smiles behind his mask at the child's threat and protectiveness and steps from the branches, vanishing.

_Do you remember how they burned out hands?_

"I see you, old man." Uchiha Itachi doesn't turn his head, but keeps gathering up his kunai, each slammed into a precise point of the clearing.

Madara keeps his high perch, amused. "Old man? Didn't your parents teach you manners?"

At ten this child had promise untold. At thirteen, as he turns his red eyes onto Madara, the man knows something.

"I see you, Uchiha Madara."

This is a child that will one day surpass even him.

"Ah, a little one who listens too hard at his bed time stories? Shame, you should know better than to mock old men. I could be a tengu of the woods." Madara leans forward to cock his orange mask at the boy. Itachi's eyes, no smaller than they were, blink slowly. Purposefully. He is not frightened by you, intimidated or awed. Those eyes dominate the face, giving any viewer no choice but to gaze into them.

The child entrances Madara. Oh, these years he has far surpassed his gangly cousin, growing in harmony with every part so that at thirteen, he hardly looks out of place in any way. How Madara would have _laughed_ at Izuna for choosing the lesser child as Itachi soared past his common cousin and took to the skies with flaming wings destined to burn them all. Izuna would have defended his protégé by saying Itachi was too unstable, too bright, too hot, too anxious and earnest-too everything, for he looks at his cousin with the world and heaven too in his eyes still when he should be past such nonsense.

"If you are a tengu, I have nothing to fear." Itachi's smile-small quick quirk of the lips-barely registers before Madara feels the kiss of metal at his neck. The breath of fear, the cold realization of _death_ imminent he has not felt in years. "Cats fear no birds."

Itachi's speed is more than Madara had guessed. Perhaps more than the genius of the Mirage he still clings too with childish fists? Perhaps because of the Mirage he still plays with in the shallows of the river, trying to compensate for his cousin's greater speed. Madara can respond with more skill, but he halts the blade inches from the arrogant child's throat, _longing_ to shove it into that pale column, and see those passive eyes turn frantic. He doesn't like someone getting the better of him.

Izuna would laugh and say that was why Madara never was a good teacher, if he were still alive.

"Teach me." The child demands, knowing he has gotten the better of the old man lurking in trees. _Knowing _he won't be killed for this infraction. Madara looks at the large red eyes, the pale cat face, and he smiles. Teach this child who will leave him behind in the next few years? Teach this child who will drive him mad with jealousy and paranoid fear of that knife in the back?

"How can I resist such elegant persuasion?"

If he keeps the child by his side, instead of allowing him to fly free over the Nakano with his cousin, the danger will be less.

_Do you remember when we opened our hands and found only crushed fireflies?_

Madara meets Itachi for the last time a week before he dies. He only knows his protégé is about because of the wracking wet cough that issues from the darkness. Madara waits for his eyes to adjust and sees Itachi sitting in the starlight. Itachi doesn't glance to the side.

"I see you, Madara."

"Do you? With those eyes?" Madara takes up a perch on a rock to the left of Itachi, the higher vantage giving him some security. His child surpassed him long ago, and now he takes no chances for flights of fancy or thoughts of revenge.

Itachi's lips curl into a gentle smile. "It would be most rude of me to say I smelled you."

"Humor. The well of the self-sacrificing is indeed deep," Madara returns, watching Itachi's silence and stillness. He isn't fooled by Itachi's collection. He knows the trials of the everyday. He's seen the

collection of track marks on Itachi's arm, Kisame's sudden carefulness around Itachi-that watchfulness that has never been there before, even when Itachi was small enough to crush. Once again, Itachi has picked up an adoring follower.

Itachi has come a long way since ten and the river. Madara had thought the child put together at thirteen, but now he sees the whole of it. He is too thin, too agile, too weak in the joints, but to see him in motion was true beauty. True terror. Oh, what he could have been without moral constraints. He could have been Izuna born again.

Itachi dips his head. He coughs-a deep wet sound that brings up the smell of blood and rot. Madara looks at the boy and smiles. Oh, what he could have been if not for fate, for irony, for martyrdom.

Oh, what he _is_, withered and burned away to the barest essentials of a human being. Still-_still_ he is more than a match for Madara. That is why he sits to calmly, his face to the stars instead of on the man sitting above him in the dark.

"Such peace for a man whose brother is running loose in the world, plotting his death," Madara adds.

"Sasuke will learn what he needs to after my death," Itachi's reply cuts easily through the night. The young, dying man looks at his blood smeared hands. "It's almost over. . ."

"Such joy-do you find life a burden?" Madara needles. Words are all he has now.

Itachi closes his eyes. "I've been lying dead in a river bed for eight years now. It's past time I stopped walking the restless earth." Those red eyes open. Madara refuses to flinch as they touch him, dissecting him from head to foot as he once dissected Itachi on the river bed. "Did you feel it, when your best love died?"

Itachi's turns of phrase, the fluidity he seems to have between the idea of friend and lover, often annoy Madara. Love. Love is not something for the Uchiha, and it is far past time Itachi learned that. "No."

"When you brother was killed?" Itachi wears no smile, but Madara feels it as the barb sinks in.

When his brother died. When his lifelong friend was found half dismembered in the trees. . . Did he feel it?

"You could have been the greatest and settled all these petty wars with your own hands," Madara muses-deflects.

"No," Itachi clears his throat. "I only learned to kill people to solve my problems. The world needs someone with a different solution if things are ever going to change." Itachi coughs again, deep, wet, wracking. Madara waits for the fit to pass, scathing comment for the soft pacifistic sentimentality. It doesn't pass. It doesn't end. He can see Itachi's lips going blue, but the coughing _does not stop._

For a dazzling moment, Madara thinks Itachi will die _right here._

"Itachi-san." Kisame brushes by Madara (something he never would have done _before_, such disrespect), crouching down by his wheezing partner, pressing something to Itachi's face. The young man's hands are filled with the sludge from his lungs-blood and necrotic tissue and pus. Madara sneers at the smell and turns, leaving the two crouched in the faint starlight, whispering faint assurances to each other. False assurances, for Itachi is dying, and no one can save him anymore.

Madara feels he has bitten a promising apple and found only worms and canker inside. The idea of Itachi sours in his mind, fretful and disgusting. Wasted. Wasted on foolish sentiments.

If Izuna were alive. . .

But he lies dead, and has for a count of more than eight. Unlike Itachi, Madara still lives. He shakes his head. Itachi is dead.

Now.

It is time for a new protégé.

If Izuna were alive, he would laugh because his protégé overcame Madara's in the end, and dragged them both down to the murky river bed.

_Do you remember that the stars are beyond our mortal reach?_


End file.
